diff --git a/r/tools/nixlibs-allowlist.txt b/r/tools/nixlibs-allowlist.txt
index bd9f0c1b2c084..86902023763a2 100644
--- a/r/tools/nixlibs-allowlist.txt
+++ b/r/tools/nixlibs-allowlist.txt
@@ -2,3 +2,5 @@ ubuntu
 centos
 redhat
 rhel
+rocky
+opensuse
diff --git a/r/tools/nixlibs.R b/r/tools/nixlibs.R
index fc79e06328005..ef6c1700b1ad9 100644
--- a/r/tools/nixlibs.R
+++ b/r/tools/nixlibs.R
@@ -221,8 +221,8 @@ check_allowlist <- function(os, allowed = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apa
   allowlist <- tryCatch(
     # Try a remote allowlist so that we can add/remove without a release
     suppressWarnings(readLines(allowed)),
-    # Fallback to default: allowed only on Ubuntu and CentOS/RHEL
-    error = function(e) c("ubuntu", "centos", "redhat", "rhel")
+    # Fallback to default allow list shipped with the package
+    error = function(e) readLines("tools/nixlibs-allowlist.txt")
   )
   # allowlist should contain valid regular expressions (plain strings ok too)
   any(grepl(paste(allowlist, collapse = "|"), os))
diff --git a/r/tools/test-nixlibs.R b/r/tools/test-nixlibs.R
index 02e822c3420c8..838b39ac54c73 100644
--- a/r/tools/test-nixlibs.R
+++ b/r/tools/test-nixlibs.R
@@ -147,6 +147,13 @@ test_that("select_binary() with test program", {
 })
 
 test_that("check_allowlist", {
+  # because we read from a file when we can't get the allow list from github,
+  # we need to make sure we are in the same directory as we would be when building
+  # (which is one level higher, so we can find `tools/nixlibs.R`)
+  # TODO: it's possible that we don't want to run this whole file in that directory
+  # like we do currently.
+  withr::local_dir("..")
+
   tf <- tempfile()
   cat("tu$\n^cent\n^dar\n", file = tf)
   expect_true(check_allowlist("ubuntu", tf))